Jeremiah 1:3

1:3 The Lord also spoke to him when Jehoiakim son of Josiah ruled over Judah, and he continued to speak to him until the fifth month of the eleventh year ¹  that Zedekiah son of Josiah ruled over Judah. That was when the people of Jerusalem ²  were taken into exile. ³ 

Jeremiah 14:15

14:15 I did not send those prophets, though they claim to be prophesying in my name. They may be saying, ‘No war or famine will happen in this land.’ But I, the Lord, say this about ⁴  them: ‘War and starvation will kill those prophets.’ ⁵ 

Jeremiah 36:23

36:23 As soon as Jehudi had read three or four columns ⁶  of the scroll, the king ⁷  would cut them off with a penknife ⁸  and throw them on the fire in the firepot. He kept doing so until the whole scroll was burned up in the fire. ⁹ 

Jeremiah 37:21

37:21 Then King Zedekiah ordered that Jeremiah be committed to the courtyard of the guardhouse. He also ordered that a loaf of bread ¹⁰  be given to him every day from the baker’s street until all the bread in the city was gone. So Jeremiah was kept ¹¹  in the courtyard of the guardhouse.

[1:3]  ¹ sn This would have been August, 586 b.c. according to modern reckoning.

[1:3]  ² map For location see Map5 B1; Map6 F3; Map7 E2; Map8 F2; Map10 B3; JP1 F4; JP2 F4; JP3 F4; JP4 F4.

[1:3]  ³ tn Heb “and it [the word of the Lord] came in the days of Jehoiakim…until the end of the eleventh year of Zedekiah…until the carrying away captive of Jerusalem in the fifth month.”

[14:15]  ⁴ tn Heb “Thus says the Lord about.” The first person construction has been used in the translation for better English style.

[14:15]  ⁵ tn Heb “Thus says the Lord concerning the prophets who are prophesying in my name and I did not send them [= whom I did not send] and they are saying [= who are saying], ‘Sword and famine…’, by sword and famine those prophets will be killed.” This sentence has been restructured to conform to contemporary English style.

[36:23]  ⁷ tn Heb “doors.” This is the only time the word “door” is used in this way but all the commentaries and lexicons agree that it means “columns.” The meaning is figurative based on the similarity of shape.

[36:23]  ⁸ tn Heb “he.” The majority of commentaries and English versions are agreed that “he” is the king. However, since a penknife (Heb “a scribe’s razor”) is used to cut the columns off, it is possible that Jehudi himself did it. However, even if Jehudi himself did it, he was acting on the king’s orders.

[36:23]  ⁹ sn Heb “a scribe’s razor.” There is some irony involved here since a scribe’s razor was used to trim the sheets to be sewn together, scrape them in preparation for writing, and to erase errors. What was normally used to prepare the scroll was used to destroy it.

[36:23]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “until the whole scroll was consumed upon the fire which was in the fire pot.”

[37:21]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “And/Then King Zedekiah ordered and they committed Jeremiah to [or deposited…in] the courtyard of the guardhouse and they gave to him a loaf of bread.” The translation has been structured the way it has to avoid the ambiguous “they” which is the impersonal subject which is sometimes rendered passive in English (cf. GKC 460 §144.d). This text also has another example of the vav (ו) + infinitive absolute continuing a finite verbal form (וְנָתֹן [vÿnaton] = “and they gave”; cf. GKC 345 §113.y and see Jer 32:44; 36:23).

[37:21]  ¹¹ tn Heb “Stayed/Remained/ Lived.”